


The Blademaker's Granddaughter

by hoteldestiel



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, Child Loss, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Light Angst, Loss, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 10:01:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17384399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoteldestiel/pseuds/hoteldestiel
Summary: Fen needed to get out of Fillory. She just didn't expect to be followed; and by Margo of all people. Mourning is a hell of a lot harder when the person who caused the pain won't leave you alone. My #Fentastic week oneshot!





	The Blademaker's Granddaughter

She’d escaped Fillory. She’d discovered the numbing glory that was gin. And yet, no distance, no planetary change of scenery, no strange, burning liquid could take away the depth of her heartache. She wasn’t sure anything would. Eliot was no help. He’d tried, but how could he empathize, really, when he hadn’t even wanted the baby in the first place? It was such a gutting experience like cutting yourself for the first time while refining the shape of a blade. Unexpected and sharp.

There was Frey, which had been – unconventional, a hard enough pill to swallow – but now this? Now… nothing? The family she thought she was building was fake. The marriage she was tied to for eternity didn’t exactly scream “real, true love.” As she pulled the light blue bottle to her lips, the piney scent of it reminding her just a little of the Fillorian forest near where she grew up, she couldn’t help but wonder when so much of her life had become a lie. How much of herself was getting lost to that lie, every day she continued living it. The liquid in the glass bottle sloshed up the sides as she lowered it roughly to the couch beside her.

“Fen…” Margo’s voice cut through her quickly tightening downward spiral.

This made sense, in a very twisted way. That, of all the people who would find her trying and failing to drown out the cries of an infant she never got to hold, it would be Margo. Margo, who was the whole reason she was suffering any of this pain to begin with. Margo, who was supposed to be in Fillory helping Eliot fix all the things that went wrong when a world that counted on magic to stay afloat was plum out of it. Margo, who should have been anywhere but standing next to where she sat on an old, multi-colored, overstuffed couch in the eclectic, carefully composed chaos of the Physical Kids’ cottage.

It wasn’t often that Fen felt like she understood her husband, but spending time here, and knowing how he felt about the place, she thought maybe she was learning a little bit more about him. To her surprise, it was something she thought maybe they had in common. Carefully composed chaos. She felt a pang of affection for the High King, and it was only that loyalty, and the knowledge of what Margo meant to Eliot that made her finally raise her eyes to meet Margo’s concerned stare.

“Hello? Earth to Fen? Well, Fen to Earth, I guess, really,” she said, unable to stop the self-satisfied smirk that spread across her lips at her unintended play on words. Always so clever, that Margo Hanson. Just not quite clever enough to save her family, Fen thought bitterly.

“Go away,” Fen said, letting her eyes drop back to the bottle at her side, still tightly in her grip.

“Honey, you really shouldn’t be drinking Bombay plain like that. You really shouldn’t drink gin by itself, period. At least add in a twist of lime,” Margo said, reaching for the bottle. Fen pulled it closer to her body immediately.

“I’m trying to help. But if you want a wicked case of heartburn later, be my guest,” Margo said, folding her arms over her chest.

“I think I’ve had more than enough of your help to last a lifetime,” Fen said, spitting the word “help” with extra venom.

“Look, Fen,” Margo said, stepping closer to the couch, like she might try to sit down.

The thought of having to share the same space with her like that, so closely, so casually as if nothing were wrong at all, felt like a thousand tiny knives stabbing at her lungs in a ceaseless rotation.

“I said go. Away.”

“No,” Margo said, her tone fierce.

This was what Fen hated about Margo most – her ferocity, her stubbornness. It was once what she’d most admired about the High Queen. It was truly a sight to behold, the way she could bend even the High King to her will simply by being so sure she was right. Fen had believed that unabashed certainty was exactly what Fillory needed, for a time. But then she’d become the casualty, the bargaining chip, the leverage. As it turned out, the awe of watching Margo wield her fearless power was only nice when her interests aligned with yours. Fen hated her for that. She hated her even more for the unwavering loyalty Eliot gave her, because it was that persistent faith from someone who, while yes, flawed, Fen loved and trusted and believed in, that made it impossible to hate Margo at all. At least not in the enduring way she deserved.

“Fine. Bring me some goddamned limes, then,” Fen said, the forceful bravado she tried to channel from the bossy High Queen standing in front of her felt foreign on her tongue, but she leaned into it all the same.

Margo smiled, just a little, and nodded, heading to the bar to gather supplies. “Now that I can do.”

Fen hoped Margo didn’t take that as a victory. Fen was simply exhausted. Exhausted by her own grief, exhausted by her inability to escape it. The amount of energy it would have taken to continue pushing Margo to leave when that was so obviously not what Margo wanted wasn’t worth the effort.

A few moments later, she returned with two small, crystal glasses, lime wedges, and a bottle of tonic water tucked under her arm. She held out her hand for the gin, which Fen reluctantly handed over, and Margo went to work crafting the perfect drink.

“Why are you here, Margo?” Fen asked as she watched her assemble the drinks. Focusing on Margo’s hands as they worked was better than focusing on the gaping hole with ragged edges inside of her that hurt constantly.

“El told me about your talk,” Margo said, and if Fen wasn’t completely delusional from gin and grief, she thought she might have heard an ounce of remorse in her tone.

“Of course he did,” Fen mumbled. Just once, it would be nice to have her husband choose her loyalty over Margo. One time. Fen didn’t think she was asking for much. She just wanted a little time to sort through this alone, to find a way to live in the fresh Hell she’d been handed and still be Fen, or at least some version of herself that wasn’t completely hollowed out. But no, Eliot had to send in the cavalry. It might have been sweet, a sign that he cared, but he’d sent Margo, which really only added insult to injury.

“Hey, he’s on your side here,” Margo said, squeezing a lime wedge into each glass and moving to slot another on each glass rim, but the wedges were missing a cut down the middle.

“Well, fuck,” she mumbled, standing to retrieve a knife.

Fen held up a hand to stop her and pulled a small blade out of a sheath on her belt. “Here.”

Margo accepted it, looking more than a little bewildered, and Fen felt the tiniest bit of pleasure at having caught her off-guard.

“Damn, ok. Good to know you’re packing,” she said, slicing the wedges before handing the knife back.

“My father was a blade maker,” Fen explained easily.

Margo simply nodded in response and handed Fen one of the glasses. Then, with the other in hand, she took the seat on the couch next to Fen. Despite the civility with which they’d been regarding one another over the past few moments, the sudden closeness of Margo made Fen’s stomach twist, made her skin prickle uncomfortably. She took a large gulp of the drink – it really was good, much better than drinking straight from the bottle – and moved so she was sitting on the arm of the couch instead of the cushion. Margo noticed the movement immediately.

“I don’t bite,” she said, and it looked like she wanted to add something, but stopped herself.

“I don’t like being around you,” Fen said. She saw no reason to mince words, even if Margo was Eliot’s best friend.

“That’s fair,” Margo said, though it didn’t look like she fully believed it.

“Fen, I wanted to say I’m sorry,” she added after a beat.

Fen could feel Margo’s eyes on her but couldn’t bring herself to meet them.

“I fucked up. In a big way.”

“You fucked up?” Fen repeated, her tone almost scoffing, dripping with disbelief. “You gambled my family, Margo. You promised something that wasn’t yours to promise in a game you shouldn’t have even been playing, and in the end? I lost everything.” The words rushed out of her, heated and angry, like molten steel, and she did nothing to temper them.

“I know! But Eliot was going to die,” Margo said, an uncharacteristic air of desperation in her tone. Fen hated the way it sounded, hated how it almost made her pity Margo’s choice. Almost.

“My daughter did die.” Fen shot back, “Eliot’s daughter.”

Margo was silent for a long time. Fen was, too. For awhile, the only sound in the common room of the cottage was the clinking of ice as they sipped from their drinks. Fen, sitting in her pain, waiting for something to dull it just a little. Margo, looking for once like there was an answer she might not have.

“It was either a broken family, or a fatherless kid and a kingless kingdom. I’m sorry for how what I did hurt you, but I made the choice with the fewest number of casualties,” Margo said finally. Her words were heavy. Fen could feel them sitting in the air between them, tangible, big. But she couldn’t bring herself to reach out and grab them. There was logic in what she had said, but logic did nothing to fix the shattered things inside of her. It wasn’t cold comfort because it wasn’t comfort at all.

“You took something that wasn’t yours to take.”

“Eliot was going to die.”

“You don’t know that!” Fen lashed out, the anger simmering in her voice coming to a boil over and spilling everywhere.

“I do! And you do, too, if you’d let yourself! He’s a hell of a magician, a phenomenal smooth-talker, and a fuck of a lot better of a person than he gives himself credit for, but he’s shit with a sword. Magic was the only chance he had,” Margo said, and it was clear that they were at an impasse.

“Yeah, well, you’re shit at apologies,” Fen grumbled, tipping the glass to her lips again.

“You’re not the first to tell me that,” Margo conceded, mirroring Fen’s motions.

“I want it to stop hurting.”

“I know.”

“It feels like all the air keeps getting ripped from my lungs, like I’ve just been tossed into the forge, like scrap metal.”

“I know.”

“It hurts so badly, I want to die.”

“I know.”

And there was something there, in Margo’s eyes. Some pained secret she wouldn’t reveal, some fissure in her own heart that hadn’t healed, maybe, that made Fen believe her. Made Fen hate her just a little bit less. She cursed her ridiculous capacity for empathy.

“Will it ever go away?”

Margo considered this, running a pointer finger along the rim of her glass until it made a high-pitched, melodic hum while she thought.

“Not completely,” she said honestly, “But it gets quieter. It… turns into something else. Something more bearable.”

In an instant, Fen was intensely curious about what had made Margo hurt badly enough that she spoke with such certainty now.

“How do you get through until then?” Fen asked, instead of the question she really wanted the answer to. As curious as she was, she wasn’t sure she could shoulder another pain anywhere near her own.

“I dunno,” Margo said, her tone softer than Fen had ever remembered hearing it, even when she’d eavesdropped on the occasional quiet conversation between her and Eliot.

“Gin helps,” Margo laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Eliot helps,” she added, “If you let him.”

Fen nodded. Maybe she’d underestimated her husband. It sure felt like she’d underestimated Margo. Fen stayed where she was, perched on the arm of the couch, but she motioned Margo closer. Margo, in another surprising turn of events, took the suggestion without even a hint of snarky protest. She settled her back against Fen’s shins, laying her legs across the couch, tapping at various spots on her glass absentmindedly. Fen let her free hand drop to Margo’s shoulder, and was surprised when Margo’s free hand rose to cover it.

“I really am sorry, Fen,” she said.

It didn’t take away the pain. It didn’t right the wrong or create forgiveness that Fen couldn’t give. It didn’t give her an answer or make the dark, rocky path ahead of her any less dangerous. It solved nothing, but for the first time since she’d learned she was a mother without a daughter to show for it, Fen felt the tiniest bit less alone. And that was something.


End file.
